A cup of fine tea: Jennifer Wong’s “Companions”

Reading Jennifer Wong’s poem is a discomforting experience, not least because the “Companions” of the title refer to misshapen dolls created by a nameless and troubled artist, whose story we learn from a largely dispassionate persona.

The first stanza tells us about the doll-maker’s art, method and psyche. Like many artists, she is obsessed with her creations. The persona observes that she has made the dolls ‘plenty of times’ (L2) and that she is highly focused: ‘For days she’d sit / Cold on the newspapered floor’ (L5-L6). While ‘newspapered floor’ gives us some idea of the interior of the makeshift workroom, ‘cold’ is ambiguous: is the artist physically or emotionally cold? This strikes one as odd – shouldn’t one’s art make one warm? Or is this perhaps a reference to Pygmalion‘s cold marble Galatea? We are also told that the artist recycles garments such as ‘Tights, lingerie, lumps of cotton’ (L3) to make the dolls; these materials evoke a sense of intimacy and femininity. However, the ‘scissors’ and ‘strings’ (L4) she works with introduce a sense of danger to the poem, and by the end of the stanza, it is clear that the character’s activity is actually rather sinister. She ‘fervently’ (and sadistically?) twists (L7) and wrings (L8) the materials into dolls, even though the result of all this, the persona assures us, is ‘beauty’ (L9). The question here is, perhaps, can beauty arise from violence?

The second stanza gives us more information about the doll-maker’s creation and treatment of her ‘companions': ‘Another version you had them / splashed with paint or / stapled with sequins’ (L10-L13). Here, the character’s movements seem to be neurotic and impatient: splashed (not painted) and stapled (not sewn or stitched). The dolls are even tossed into the washing machine – spun and drown (L13). And yet strangely, and perhaps unconvincingly, we are told that this is ‘A loving act’ (L14). Why ‘loving’? Can you love something violently? Or is this an ironic remark? The two words that end the stanza, ‘bruised’ and ‘domestic’ (L14), may suggest a possible explanation for the artist’s psychology. Together, they lead us to interpret the artist’s behavior as a re-enactment of domestic violence. Perhaps the character’s ungentle handling of the dolls mirrors her unhappy family?

The family metaphor is strengthened when in the following stanza, the character is compared to the ‘mother’ (L19) of her dolls, each bearing her name (L21). However, it seems that these dumb ‘companions’ do not live up to the artist’s expectations. She is not at all proud of her children, as the dolls are not displayed, but are forcefully hidden away, ‘crammed’ inside a leather trunk under her bed (L17). These dolls are ambivalently described: ‘they live and hiss and forget / Their mother’ (L18-L19), as if they are ungrateful for being created, but they are also ‘innocent’ (L20). If the dolls could respond, we might hear something similar to this: ‘Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould me man’?1

Up to this point, it is still possible to interpret the artist in the poem as a God-like figure who creates and manipulates, and the materials she uses (tights, lingerie, cottons) are perhaps suggestive of her gender. More concerned about the process than the product, the character seems to have little emotional attachment with the ‘children’. She is obsessed, and cannot stop making: even though there are ‘so many by now’ (L15), there is ‘no signs of stopping’ (L16). While the world is allegedly created in seven days, the artist sits for days (L5) to build her world peopled with dolly companions, which are to a certain extent her likeness – they are after all made from her intimate clothing and bear her name.

However, the mention of the artist’s parents in the following stanza suggests a more biographical interpretation of the poem is in order, although the God-artist analogy needs not be completely dismissed:

Your parents would never admire Those legs you made. They have such faith you are On your way to Christie’s, if not, At least a very decent gallery.(L22-L26)

Earlier, we see that the artist is dissatisfied with her dolls and they are banished to darkness (‘crammed inside your dark leather trunk under bed’ (L17)). It is now revealed that she herself has failed her own parents’ expectations. Instead of succeeding in the art world by having works auctioned at Christie’s or showcased at ‘a very decent gallery’ (L26), she makes countless dummy companions which even she, the ‘mother’, cannot warm to.

Knowing this back story illuminates her treatment of the dolls. They are a product of her own frustration and she obsessively produces them as a means of release. However, once completed, she feels that her dolls are inferior, and secrets them away. This done, the cycle starts again and she begins to make more dolls. In this process, the dolls become both an expression of her failures and her secret accomplices in them. We are reminded of A.S. Byatt‘s poem “Dolly Keeps A Secret” in Possession (1990): ‘Dolly keeps a Secret / Safer than a Friend / Dolly’s Silent Sympathy / Lasts without end’. However, in Wong’s poem, the dolls also provide a silent yet deafening judgment: their very existence announcing her unlimited limitations.

The final stanza asks, slightly heavy-handedly: ‘What’s there to be afraid of? / Just a bag of bad dreams / And a specimen of life’ (L27-L29). Here, the poet plays on a common nightmare or horror movie premise of a doll coming to life to haunt its victims. For the character, this animation, although more figurative, is just as scary. Her failed efforts take a human form as dolls; they are ‘specimen of life’ stuffed with crushed dreams. No wonder she tries so hard to bury them as soon as she has brought them to life.

Jennifer Wong [website] is a writer from Hong Kong and her poems have appeared in Warwick Review, Iota, Coffeehouse Poetry, Aesthetica, Mascara, New Writer, Strong Verse, Open Wide Magazine, and The Oxford Reader, among others. Her first collection, Summer Cicadas, was published by Chameleon Press. In 2008, her poem “Myth” was long-listed for the UK Plough Poetry Prize. She read English literature at University College, Oxford and completed an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia.

Excellent analysis of the poem. The doll motif twisted into a reflection of the artist’s psyche certainly rings true. The pathos of the images suggests a sadness that is twisted by something dark and hidden.

I am also reminded of another maker of a dark frightening figure, Doctor Frankenstein. It’s not difficult to see a parallel between the dolls and the Monster, as conjured by Mary Shelly. Both reveal the life that creative works take on after they have left their maker’s hands. Often they reflect dark elements of the creator’s soul that normally lay hidden in the shadows of life.

I’m also reminded of Voodoo dolls. Those magical human figures that are connected to people. Often dark twisted rituals are performed to attempt to pin ones anger and hate into the doll and toward the victim. The following lines could qualify:

“Fervently twisting them into shape,
Wringing beauty
Out of a lack of proportion.”

The ending of the poem tries to put a good face to the dolls. Telling us:

“What’s there to be afraid of?
Just a bag of bad dreams
And a specimen of life.”

But bad dreams are a reflection of deep emotions that haunt the soul. Dolls may seem to be small and easily stuffed into bags, but life is never that easy. Dolls can hide one’s demons, but the darkness of pain does not heal by repression. Bad dreams return until they are given the love that they need.

I loved the poem much more after reading your reading of it :-) its such a sad poem… yes, the God created us in his image metaphor is apt, i think. So is the disappointment of the mother in the child not becoming as imagined…

Thanks for this splendid review of a powerful poem. The line that jumped out for me is “A loving act. Bruised. Domestic.” I felt that this was the pivot on which the poem balanced itself, everything else – the hard impoverished life (cold newspapered floor), the anger during the making of the dolls (fervently twisting, wringing beauty, left to die, crammed inside…), the despair (penultimate stanza) and finally the last stanza where the protagonist is being told not to be afraid, which to me conjures up a picture of a woman about to end herself – seems to radiate from this line. It seems like a curtain whipped back for a second, giving me a glimpse of her past, things the protagonist ran away from but finally couldn’t. And yes there is the fear of the dolls coming to life! Very vivid poem. Thanks!

The mother analogy fails in that the protagonist seems to have the means to produce unlimited number of dolls, while a woman cannot pop out more than a dozen or so children before facing physiological limitations. Perhaps she is more like a teacher, or a nun, or another kind of matriarch that can “twist and wring” people around her and accomplishing nothing but their scorn.

(Actually I prefer the interpretation of obsessing over one’s failures better, but as with all good poems, this one seems to be open to more than one.)

i’m not so much into free prose, but i like this: the run of the words and images and thoughts is smooth, despite the jumbled emotions. as to the psychology of the poem, i cannot comment much as it is more of a girly thing :)

Excellent analysis! I hadn’t read this poem before, so thanks for drawing my attention to it.

One additional word that seems to me to resonate with the haunted room and the skeletons in its cupboard is “abuse.” Like in an abused child’s analysis, where the child’s “play” is analysed for clues, the narrator of the poem is watching/telling of the character’s “play” with her created dolls: in twisting, pushing, abusing, she is also describing the relationship she has with her parents. There is also awareness of the abuse, as the “crime” is hidden in the “dark, leather trunk.”

I liked the comment about Frankenstein. Interestingly, the “cold” floor/relationship/character echoes the chilling way that the creator Frankenstein treated his own creation. A further question that arises from this for me, is whether and how this kind of creating and creation (the dolls, Frankenstein) – be it artistic, scientific, or technological – fits within the boundaries of the “humane” world. Neither the “dolls,” nor Frankenstein, nor indeed the nuclear bomb, do, while they are undoubtedly here!

The writer Mary Shelley, and the poet Jennifer Wong, through their wonderful and insightful work, describe this moral issue and explore where the problems might lie.